Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Teaching -- Common Core Backlash

In a previous posting I stated that if I were teaching
today, I would leave the profession.One
of my reasons is the imposition of Common Core upon public schools.

I have read that Common Core is a compilation of national
standards designed by “education experts” -- the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School
Officers, Achieve, and Student Achievement Partners: all non-governmental
groups paid for by the Gates Foundation -- to generate high student
achievement in math and language arts.It
is part of President Obama’s “Race to the Top” program, which provides
financial assistance to states willing to accept specific requirements such as annual
standardized testing to be used to measure teacher effectiveness, the closure
of failing public schools, and the expansion of charter schools.43 states currently have signed on to Race to
the Top and Common Core, including my home state Oregon.

Advocates of Common Core declare that elementary and secondary
school students will be required to develop a deeper knowledge of math,
reading, and written expression, to think more critically, and to apply their
enhanced knowledge and skills to real world problems.This year every state that has accepted
Common Core will subject its public school students to as much as 10 hours of
rigorous testing to determine how many of them meet the Core standards.

Critics of Race to the Top and Common Core are spokespeople
of a growing public backlash.Teachers' unions and educators state that standardized
tests are an inaccurate way to measure teacher effectiveness.Too many factors inside and outside the
school are beyond an individual teacher’s ability to address. This reality has been ignored.High-stakes testing, which invite teaching to
the test, is by its nature unreliable.Such education reforms -- pushed by corporate foundations headed most notably
by Bill Gates, the Walton family, and the Board family – are agenda-driven,
critics say, and unproven.Political motivation
wafts.“ALEC
[the American Legislative Exchange Council] has been ghostwriting bills and
passing them out to astroturf organizations around the country to put forward
legislation that undermines teachers' unions and helps in this effort to restructure
education based on test scores,” Jesse Hagopian, a teacher and union activist
in Seattle, Washington, has declared (Blaskey and Horn 1).

As many as 70 percent of Oregon students taking this year’s rigorous
Common Core-based tests (for the first time) are expected to fail.One critic, University
of Oregon education professor Jerry
Rosiek, whose third-grade daughter is in the EugeneSchool District,
states that standardized tests exacerbate a culture of teaching to the
test.“The tests detract from the
quality of education she’s getting.They
require resources and time, and they narrow the curriculum” (Woolington
A10).Moreover, the Eugene school district hasn’t been provided
enough time for its instructors to teach the more rigorous curriculum.Rosiek believes students shouldn’t have to
struggle for hours taking a test for which they are not prepared and which will
cause them unnecessary anxiety.The
primary beneficiary of high-stakes, mandatory standardized tests, Rosiek
maintains, is publishing companies that sell books to prepare students for the
tests.These tests also allow
politicians to divert public attention away from the real causes of poor
student academic achievement: poverty, the destruction of the core family, and
the underfunding of public education.

More and more parents across the country are choosing to
have their children opt out of taking the Core tests. States allow parents to do this on religious
grounds or to protect their learning disabled children.Eugene
parent Heather Kliever has stated that opting out is the only effective way to
challenge the tests because district leaders and school board members, she
believes, have not looked critically at the tests.Her eleven-year-old sixth grade son Alden
qualified for the state’s Talented and Gifted programs.He will be opting out of the Common Core tests.He has his own views on the matter.Many of his peers will try to avoid going to
school on the day of the tests.He
doesn’t understand the point of them.His teachers give him frequent quizzes or exams to evaluate what he
knows.“Regular tests are fine.But just having tests on a computer that
takes multiple hours and days, I think it’s a waste of money” (Woolington A10).

Diane Ravitch, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of
Education and Research Professor of Education at New YorkUniversity,
agrees.“Frankly, the idea of subjecting
third graders to an eight-hour exam is repugnant, as is the prospect of a
10-hour exam for high school students, as is the absurd [projected] idea of
testing children in kindergarten, first, and second grades. All of these tests
will be accompanied by test prep and interim exams and periodic exams. This is
testing run amok, and the biggest beneficiary will be the testing industry,
certainly not students.

“Students don't become smarter or wiser or
more creative because of testing. Instead, all this testing will deduct as much
as a month of instruction for testing and preparation for testing. In addition,
states will spend tens of millions, hundreds of millions, or even more, to buy
the technology and bandwidth necessary for the Common Core testing … The money
spent for Common Core testing means there will be less money to reduce class
sizes, to hire arts teachers, to repair crumbling buildings, to hire school
nurses, to keep libraries open and staffed, and to meet other basic needs.States are cutting the budget for schools at
the same time that the Common Core is diverting huge sums for new technology,
new textbooks, new professional development, and other requirements to prepare
for the Common Core.”

The sooner Common Core testing dies, “the
sooner schools and teachers will be freed of the Giant Federal Accountability
Plan hatched in secret and foisted upon our nation's schools. And when it does
die, teachers will have more time to do their job and to use their professional
judgment to do what is best for each student” (Ravitch 1).

Meanwhile, many veteran teachers, like I
would, will leave the profession.